[chris_wot]

You might not support or use Google in any way. There are such people. They use DDG and go to extraordinary lengths to prevent any assistance to Google. I'm not one of those people, but the ability to turn off the feature is reasonable.

Some folks don't trust Google. There might be a case down the road where the U.S. government required access to the data due to National Security. Given how they handled the San Bernadino iPhone incident, it's not like this won't ever happen.

Others believe that Google will use the data for their own ends. In the same way other don't want Googke to become more powerful, others will be concerned that Google uses analytical data like this for their own commercial purposes, and it's not known what this might be.

It also would be a PR nightmare if this wasn't added, even though the data is anonymised to the Homebrew guys. Perception is important also. Not to mention the fact that it doesn't hurt to add this option to Homebrew.

Personally, I'll just leave it on as I don't subscribe to any of the above views, but I'm imaginative enough to see potentially legitimate concerns. :-)

[newjersey]

I support opt-in as well. Make it the default option so people can press enter or use -y if you'd like.

I'm thinking along the lines of popcon in Debian http://popcon.debian.org/